Ecos: La Brea

🔍 Locate & Collect 100 Dire Wolf skulls hidden around the map to unlock the Mangey Dire Wolf for 2000 tracks, along with a new color gradient for Billboard names!

Without finding the wolf skulls, this skin is available for 5000 tracks.

This Friday, things are getting spooky! 👻

Introducing the Mangey Dire Wolf, a limited edition Halloween skin only available from October 10th-November 7th! 🎃

A new coat also emerges from the fog…Boggy Dire Wolf, a permanent Tier 4 skin priced at 3000 tracks. 🐾

YouTube video by Ecos: La Brea ECOS: LA BREA | Introducing the Encyclopedia

youtu.be/96cF5hy-hx0

Ready your binoculars as Part 1 of the Encyclopedia update drops October 3rd! 📖
This ingame tool will allow you to log and learn more about the incredible fauna found in Los Angeles during the Late Pleistocene.

Ancient bison calling at riverbank surrounded by orange and yellow trees

Autumnal colors 🍂

As the days of the wet season become shorter in the fall & winter months of Ice Age California, the leaves of deciduous trees (Sycamore, Walnut, Willow, & Alder) will change color.

A mammoth cow and bull browse quietly together, their silhouettes mingling with a herd of bison as the light around them fades.

Scientific evidence suggests that mammoths used their massive tusks for social, defensive, and foraging behavior, much like modern day elephants!

A pseudo-melanistic saber-tooth cat crouching down to drink in the dark of night

Lastly, but certainly not least, nights are about to get a bit darker, and opponents more abundant…

“Pseudo-Melanistic” Saber-tooth Cat, a tier 4 skin priced at 3000 tracks

Three bay leopard horses running across the landscape, the sun setting behind them

Next, keep your eyes peeled! A familiar spotty equid is inbound.

“Bay Leopard” Western Horse, a tier 4 skin priced at 3000 tracks

Ancient bison bull and cow in a sunny prairie

A new update is coming this Friday, and among some cool changes, a few new skins will be coming as well!

To start off, the most hard-headed herbivore is rolling out with a new look:

“Scoria” Ancient Bison, a tier 2 skin priced at 500 tracks

You have been spotted!
This Saturday, gallop along the new map's Coastal prairie, or stroll through the Redwood groves as a complex new horse skin. As seen during our panel at the La Brea-palooza...

Leopard Western Horse, a tier 4 skin priced at 3000 Tracks.

Something big is coming soon…

During our collab with La Brea Tar Pits & Museum, we officially announced the Columbian Mammoth as an upcoming playable in Ecos: La Brea! 🦣

This behemoth will function as a ecosystem engineer, as well as being 1 of 3 playables we are actively working on!

Summer Nights at the Tar Pits Join us for science, live music, hands-on activities, food trucks, and drinks at the Tar Bar—a perfect laid-back summer night at the Tar Pits!

Join us in celebrating Ecos with tomorrow’s Summer Nights event!

We are hosting a discussion panel to talk about the game.

For more information, check out the Page Museum website: tarpits.org/calendar/sum...

Ecos: La Brea is AT the La Brea Tar Pits!
Until Monday, July 21st, come play Ecos in person at the Page Museum in Los Angeles, CA.

A passing bison herd disturbs the stillness of the evening...

Ballona Creek is the primary waterway that carves its way through the Santa Monica basin. While today it flows as a concrete, channelized stream, during the last Ice Age it fed a vibrant riparian ecosystem. 🍃

A Western horse herd finds themselves in an unfamiliar new environment...

Redwood groves are a new plant community that will feature coastal redwood trees, western sword ferns, fungi, & more plants to come.🌲

This is one of many images highlighting an upcoming map update! 📸

Dire Wolf - Colossal A verifiable, essential apex predator who left behind troves of evidence of both its existence and impact to the ecosystem—and whose mythos continues beyond legend to this day.

colossal.com/direwolf/
www.newscientist.com/article/2477...
tarpits.org/stories/dire...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/1694312...
www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/139018
eurekamag.com/research/005... onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

(PDF) The Dire Consequences of Specializing on Large Herbivores PDF | Niche differentiation is a way in which similar species avoid competition. Some species do this by specializing in certain prey items. This review... | Find, read and cite all the research you n...

Image Credits:
La Brea Tar Pits (3,6)
Paiaoe (8)
Citations:
www.researchgate.net/publication/...
www.researchgate.net/publication/...
www.researchgate.net/publication/...
academic.oup.com/biolinnean/a...

While initially considered a sister species to grey wolves, the dire wolf instead portrays a rich, complex story of canid evolution that we have only just begun to unravel. To learn more about dire wolves and their ecosystems, be sure to check out ecoslabrea.wixsite.com/ecos--la-brea

The preprint also suggests the Aenocyon lineage evolved via admixture between basal Caninae & South American canids, followed by later admixture with the LCA of Canis & dholes. Despite earlier hybridization, both paleogenetic studies imply no gene flow between A. dirus and Canis.

Sensationalism aside, Colossal's supporting preprint, Gedman et al. 2025, provides genuine insight into the genetic prehistory of Aenocyon. Referencing nuclear & mitochondrial paleogenomes produced a potentially constrained divergence time for the Aenocyon lineage at ~4.5 Ma.

Further discourse arose recently with Colossal Biosciences' "Dire Wolf De-Extinction Project", advertising the alleged resurrection of Aenocyon via gene-editing grey wolves to mirror fossilized genomes. This has been met with criticism by institutions such as the IUCN and LANHM.

However, the study Perri et al. (2021) overturned the consensus on dire wolf heredity. Using genomic DNA, they proposed dire wolves diverged from other canines in the Late Miocene (~5-7 Ma). Accordingly, the authors redescribed the animal under its previous title: Aenocyon dirus.

In the 1980s, paleontologist Björn Kurtén proposed two North American subspecies: C. d. dirus and C.d. guildayi based on skeletal differences. Following literature from 1988 to 2010 also suggests the existence of a South American subspecies known as "Canis (dirus) nehringi".

The dire wolf was first described in the 1850s under Canis primaevus. By the early 1900s, John C. Merriam advocated for the genus Aenocyon (Greek ainos, 'terrible' and cyon, 'dog'), which was later rejected in favor of Canis dirus, a sister species to the extant grey wolf.

Roaming from Canada to Argentina in the Mid-Late Pleistocene, dire wolves were hypercarnivores, consuming a wide range of prey from ungulates, xenarthrans, & proboscideans. Studies from La Brea suggest these large canids lived in monogamous packs with high male-male competition.

5/2 update:
-Stress: System that aims to discourage unrealistic behaviors like mix-packing & over-crowding
New skins:
-Misceo Dire Wolf, Tier 1
-Laurel Saber-tooth Cat, Tier 1

To celebrate, dive into this thread reviewing the ancestry of Dire Wolves based on recent science🐺🧬:

And here’s an extra look at the Veteran cow!

This Friday, the bison of Rancho La Brea charge into battle!

JOUSTING ⚔️ is coming to Ecos! To celebrate, we are releasing a very unique skin for the Ancient Bison; Veteran!

Veteran is a tier 4 skin priced at 3000 Tracks, unique among the roster with its cosmetic broken horn.

En garde! ⚔️ The bison of Rancho La Brea are gearing up for battle. Jousting is in development!